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Russ to become newest Uga today

ATHENS — Meet the new old face of Georgia football.

Russ, the 8-year-old English bulldog and frequent stand-in mascot for the Georgia football team, trades in his interim tag for the real thing today when the university will appoint him Uga IX before kickoff against Florida Atlantic at Sanford Stadium.

Russ will become the latest in a line of English bulldogs serving in the role going back to the first Uga, who took over as the team’s official mascot in 1956. But Russ is a bit of a break from that tradition.

He’s part of the original Uga bloodline, but he was not groomed to be the full-time mascot.

After serving as an interim three times during a tragic run for the official Ugas, the university and Savannah’s Seiler family which has owned and raised each of the dogs, decided to do something they had not done and promote one of them.

“When it came out that we were going to use him again as an interim, it caused a groundswell of fan support and student support that we did not anticipate,” said Frank W. “Sonny” Seiler, the prominent attorney who started the Uga tradition when he was a second-year law student at Georgia. “They started calling the athletic department and president’s office suggesting we go ahead and make Russ Uga IX.”

It’s a special opportunity for Russ, who takes over a special role for the university. It’s hard to imagine a more iconic image to generations of Georgia fans than the bulldog in a red sweater trotting around between the hedges in Sanford Stadium.

For nearly a dozen years as its head coach, Mark Richt has been the man at the top of the Georgia football program. But he may not be its most popular image.

Richt tells a story about a time he and Vince Dooley, then Georgia’s athletic director, went to Washington, D.C., with Uga in tow. Lines formed for autographs from Richt and Dooley, the former national championship coach, but none as long as the one to snap a picture with a jowly beast at the other table.

“It was like 10 to 1,” Richt said of the ratio of fans interested in the dog compared to those waiting to meet the coaches, “and that was all of us put together versus Uga. …It’s a big deal, and I think Russ has earned his stripes.”

Despite the fanfare around the appointment, Russ’ promotion comes after a somber period for Georgia mascots.

The Seiler family has had a string of bad luck in recent years.

Uga VII — named Loran’s Best in honor of longtime Georgia media personality and Banner-Herald contributor Loran Smith — died of heart failure in 2011 at age 4, serving less than two seasons in the official role. The condition was impossible to diagnose and, even if it had been caught, inoperable, Seiler said.

Russ stepped in as an interim for the final two games of the 2009 season and the first six games of 2010 until Uga VIII — Big Bad Bruce, named in honor of veterinarian Bruce Hollett — took over for just three months before being diagnosed with canine lymphoma and dying about six months shy of his second birthday in February 2011. His term lasted six games.

Seiler is quick to point out that the recent run of untimely ends for Russ’ predecessors was hardly predictable — their conditions were neither hereditary nor particularly common in English bulldogs, he said. But even he isn’t sold on the possibility that Russ will be around to enjoy his doghouse on the sideline longer than a couple more seasons.

Hollett, who has provided care for some of the previous Ugas at the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine, estimates the English bulldog’s average life expectancy at 10 to 12 years. Despite taking the over the full-time tag with a clean bill of health, Russ is already 8.

“He’s been healthy, though, even for the time he’s been interim mascot,” Hollett said. “He’s not had to be seen by the College of Veterinary Medicine. His health’s been phenomenal, just great, and everything seems fine and well-maintained by the Seilers.”

Seiler said naming Russ the mascot is less than ideal, but he and University of Georgia President Michael Adams agreed it was the best solution at the time, even if it isn’t likely to be a long-term answer.

“Now, would I choose (Russ) to be the mascot if everything is equal? No, because he’s too old,” Seiler said. “But he has the experience, goes on road trips well and travels well.

“… (Fans) only see the dog being good-looking and say he deserves it,” Seiler said. “They don’t stop and think what happens a couple years from now when he becomes 10.”

COMING MONDAY

Morning News business writer Adam Van Brimmer takes a look at the Seiler family and the newest Georgia mascot, Uga IX.